Title: It Started With A Handgun (Loaded With Excuses)Rating: PG-13 (for language and discussion of attempted suicide)Pairing: GeneralPOV: Third Person (Pete centric)Summary: “Grow up,” Pete says, as much to himself as to Patrick. “You’re such a filthy fucking liar.”Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is fiction, nothing less, nothing more.A/N: I honestly didn't try to write this. Pete has just seemed so lonely lately, and this... Happened. Title and cut text by Marianas Trench.

It’s not really much at all, but it’s enough to make it all crash down, and it’s enough to make Pete fussy and pissed enough to care.

And it’s stupid, just Andy and Joe fighting over Joe’s goddamn pot addiction again, but it’s so fucking aggravating and Pete has a migraine, doesn’t anyone realize that?

Pete presses his hoodie over his face slowly, attempting to shift from his back to his stomach without letting any light in through his mess of hair and fabric and eyesshuttight, but it’s not working. And Pete can’t help it, he really can’t – he just gets like this. Pissy and tired and “Can’t you all just shut the fuck up for one minute?”

They all have complicated natures, but Pete won the proverbial fuck-up lottery. Can’t sleep, barely eats, lives off red-bull, gets in moods where all he wants to do is watch TV static just for the sense that it’s something more blurry than his head. He’s a train-wreck and a half, and it’s. Just. So exhausting.

Pete can hear Andy really screaming now, somewhere close to the front of the tour bus, and he can feel the throbbing in his skull when someone, probably Joe, mercilessly slams the tour bus door.

And Pete wonders to himself when they stopped moving, on their “shared for convenience” motherfuckingpieceofshit bus, but maybe it doesn’t matter, because he’s got enough motion inside his head and behind his eyes to make them all car-sick.

“Pete,” someone says, the voice close to his head, and Pete groans, buries his face further into his hoodie. He wants to curl up in a ball and sleep forever, only coming up for air when it’s absolutely necessary (and begrudgingly, then).

“No,” Pete moans, struggling to keep his eyes shut tight. “Eff off.”

“Pete,” the voice says again, and Pete can feel someone warm and solid against his side as the couch dips beneath their weight. “Pete, are you okay?”

Am I okay? Pete thinks, and it nearly drives him to insanity. Is he okay? What reason on earth would he have for being okay?

So Pete doesn’t say a word, trying to ignore the pissed-off feeling spreading through his stomach, and instead he jerks open one eye to look at his intruder. Patrick is sitting next to him, hat low on his head, pulled over his eyes, and staring at him as if he’s the one doing something wrong.

“I hate this,” Pete blurts out suddenly, the noise loud and ringing around his ears. “Patrick, I hate this.”

He winces. “It’s just a temporary break, Pete, I promise –“

“I don’t want your fucking promises.”

Patrick dips his head as he recoils, pulling slightly away from Pete. Pete just turns his face back towards the couch, trying to suffocate himself with the pillows.

“Always did want to tour with Blink,” he mumbles eventually, the words betraying the maybe-present tears Pete can feel pressing against his eyelids. “Thanks for that, I guess.”

“We’re not over,” Patrick snaps, and Pete turns to look at him again. Patrick’s face is red, his voice so defensive and sharp that Pete has to wonder which of them he’s actually trying to convince. “We’re going to come back, Pete, but we need to take a break.”

“Don’t say we!” Pete yells, and he’s suddenly off the couch, pushing Patrick away from him. “You need to take a break. Joe needs to take a break. Andy needs to take a break. I do not need to take a fucking break!”

Pete knows what Patrick is thinking: Pete has a fucking kid, and a fucking wife. He’s supposed to want this.

There’s silence for a long while, Pete standing and feeling foolish with the hood still pulled around his head and his eyes downcast and undoubtedly red, before he finally whispers, “What I need, is this.”

“Pete.”

“Please don’t,” Pete says. He’s given up, now. He doesn’t care anymore. Somewhere deep inside him, he’d like to say something along the lines of, “I suppose I can play bass for Panic!” or, “See you in the Best Buy parking lot, same time, same date” or, “What the fuck happened to forever?” but instead he just looks at the floor. Five records. Five records and nothing but a few hundred scars and a few thousand pill bottles to show for it.

“Grow up,” Pete says, as much to himself as to Patrick. “You’re such a filthy fucking liar.”

And then it’s sound check, Madison Square Garden. Their last date on the Blink-182 Reunion Tour. Pete wonders if he and Patrick will ever get along well enough again to do a reunion tour of their own one day.

Pete plays his heart out, presses soclose to Patrick for the bridge, watches Joe spin infinitely, pounds his bass lines to the steady beat of Andy's drum. Pete plays like it's his last day on Earth (it is), and when the lights go down at the end, Pete suddenly understands that he wasn’t built to make it out of this fully intact.